Star Wars Andor is back just over two years after its first season ended on Disney+. The first three episodes of season two premiered on Disney+ on April 22 and the show is just as good as before, with lots of great dialogue, intense action, and a whole bunch of tension. And sprinkled throughout Season 2 are some fantastic Easter eggs and references to the greater Star Wars universe.
Like season one, Andor’s second season (so far) hasn’t been packed with Easter eggs and callbacks. Instead, these nods to the rest of the Star Wars franchise are a bit more buried or integrated organically with the story, so you might have missed some of them. Don’t worry, I’m always here to help.
Here are 11 Star Wars Easter eggs, secrets, and references I spotted in the first six episodes of Andor season two. We will be updating this list each week with new stuff as more episodes drop.
Let’s start with the biggest and most exciting Easter egg. When Andor finally escapes the dysfunctional rebels, we get a shot of his ship flying away and see that all of this has been happening on the jungle moon of Yavin-4. Yes, the same Yavin-4 seen in the original Star Wars movie. This will eventually become the HQ of the Rebellion, but for now its temples remain abandoned.
A smaller Easter egg I spotted was the appearance of an AT-ST puppet held by a child as seen in the third episode, Harvest. Bit odd to let your kids play with a war machine controlled by the evil empire that rules over you. But hey, parents let kids play with toys referencing the US military so… (Oh and yes, another kid has a bowcaster toy, too. Chewbacca would be proud. Or confused.)
Back in season one of Andor, Luthen mentioned the Rakatan invasion. This is a direct reference to Knights of the Old Republic and some old “Legends” era lore.
Now, in season two, Luthen has given us more detail and confirmed that, in canon, the alien invasion happened 25,000 BBY. That lines up with the dawn of the Jedi and could confirm that the Rakatan will show up in James Mangold’s Star Wars movie set that far back in the timeline.
At one point, during Director Krennic’s super-secret meeting with other Imperial higher-ups, he mentions that the Emperor wants an energy source that could provide “unlimited power.” Of course, this is connected to the Death Star, but that specific line also calls back one of the Emperor’s most famous quotes from Star Wars Episode III.
Also during that same super-secret space-Nazi meeting, Krennic explains that the only people who can know about this gathering are the people in the room. He then directly namedrops two Imperial higher-ups: Moff Tarkin and Wulf Yularen.
Of the two, Tarkin is perhaps the most interesting namedrop, as we know the two of them have some beef which we see in Rogue One. It’s very funny to think that Krennic specifically made sure Tarkin was kept out of the loop on his Ghorman plans.
In the opening minutes of the first episode of season two, we see Andor steal a prototype TIE Avenger. This is an advanced Imperial starfighter we had only previously seen in some “Legends” stories. Seeing it in live-action was a treat, even if Andor nearly crashed it like 10 times.
When Andor steals the TIE Avenger he is attacked by Stormtroopers, but we also see a different kind of trooper during the fight. This fluffy soldier with a rocket launcher is a Range Trooper. We first saw them in Solo: A Star Wars Story on the planet Vandor. They are highly trained troopers normally deployed in places where the Empire needs a lot of security.
I don’t need to explain how awesome it was that Erskin Semaj appeared. Okay, I probably do. During episode three, when Luthen is talking to a young man about where he is from, they are interrupted by a drunken Tay bumping into them. That young boy is Erskin Semaj, an aide of Mon Mothma’s first seen in Star Wars Rebels. Is he an important character? No, but hey, it was cool to see the show include him as it makes sense he’d be at that wedding.
The password, Kafrene, given to Andor by the Imperial engineer at the start of episode one isn’t some random planet or made-up nonsense. (Okay, well, this is all made-up nonsense, but you know what I mean.) Kafrene is actually where we first meet Cassian Andor in Rogue One. Specifically, the Ring of Kafrene is a seedy mining colony where Cassian learns of the Death Star and kills a dude. Kafrene is also set to appear in the upcoming tactical game Star Wars Zero Company as the squad’s HQ.
In Star Wars, the planet Ghorman is the site of the infamous Ghorman Massacre, an event that we know happened in canon, though we don’t know the specifics of it. This season of Andor seems to be building toward the massacre, which is a pivotal event in Star Wars as it kickstarts the rebellion and pushes Mon Mothma to publicly stand up against the Empire.
We actually see Mothma stand against the Empire and then escape into hiding in an episode of Rebels. It seems Andor is going to fill in that part of the timeline and show us the massacre.
A big moment in Star Wars history, one that we’ve never seen before, is the Ghorman Massacre. This moment is what spurs Mon Mothma to publicly call out the Emperor and helps galvanize the rebellion. In Legends, the massacre happened when Grand Moff Tarkin landed a large ship on a group of protestors. And now we know that it still happened in the Canon timeline, but it isn’t the massacre that will eventually lead to Mothma taking a public stand against the Empire. It’s an interesting way to honor the past and old EU stories, while still letting series creator Tony Gilroy and company tell their own new story. And if you don’t know anything about Star Wars lore, it just adds some extra flavor to the world.
This is an easy-to-miss Easter egg, but when Syril returns to the office to get his notes (and contact someone about his secret mission), he distracts some guards from watching a podrace. We first saw podracing in The Phantom Menace, and it’s fun to see it still being a sport all these years later.
Did Saw’s HQ on the planet D’Qar in episodes 4 and 5 look a little familiar? That’s because we’ve seen this grassy military base before in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. This is where Leia’s Resistance is headquartered before they are attacked by the First Order and have to escape.
While on D’Qar we see Saw’s rebel group eating an alien that is being cooked over a fire. This being Star Wars, it shouldn’t surprise you that this isn’t some random alien created just for this scene. Nope! This is a Massiff, a spiky lizard-alien-dog that is common on Tatooine. Tusken Raiders often have them as pets and guard dogs. How did it end up here? I don’t know. I await the five-part comic miniseries explaining this alien dog’s origins.
No, you’re not going crazy, that was Bail Organa that popped up briefly to say hi to Mon Mothma during the Imperial Ball. However, this time around, the character wasn’t played by Jimmy Smits but instead by Benjamin Bratt. Don’t worry, Smits isn’t dead or anything like that. Instead, he just couldn’t appear in the show due to a scheduling conflict. It’s a shame that Smits won’t get to finish out Organa’s pre-New Hope storyline, but Bratt is a solid replacement, and I’m happy Organa will be a part of Andor’s final season as the character is a key part of the rebellion.
A very tiny Easter egg, but one I love, is that at some point, Luthen and his assistant Kleya were able to overhear a conversation by the Emperor’s Grand Vizier Mas Amedda aka that big blue guy from the prequels. Amedda is a fascinating character in Star Wars as he’s one of the very few people in the galaxy who know about the Emperor’s true nature as a Sith Lord.
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